Remember When?

Greetings,

Remember when we were told by a certain candidate that foreign leaders told him he needed to beat Bush?

Well, times have changed and since 2007, the pendulum has swung the other way. The problem is this is being buried under the election right now. While the press dismisses Bush as irrelevant in his 2nd term, our president is being actively engaged by European leaders. Recently President Bush met with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and the 2 clearly have a good working relationship and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are no longer problematic. The tide was clearly turning back when Merkel visited the Crawford Ranch in Texas last year in 2007. President Bush pretty much restricts visits to Crawford for leaders he gets along with well. Nicholas Sarkozy was also there and it is no secret that Sarkozy and Bush get along well and Sarkozy ran on a platform of repairing Franco-U.S. relations and Bush's relationship with Sarkozy has made Gordon Brown jealous it seems. Brown ran on not being a Tony Blair clone and now appears to be backpeddling. But he will have to work hard at fighting his own personal and political tendencies while the U.K. press dubs Sarkozy 'Sarko the first buddy'. Meanwhile, in Italy it appears that Silvio Berlusconi and his allies are retaking Italy. Italy had kicked out Berlusconi and after a brief reign of incompetence by the left, Berlusconi is back.

In a nutshell, Bush has succeeded in creating a strong working alliance between himself and Berlusconi and Brown, Merkel and Sarkozy. They all agree on Iran and Afghanistan, only Iraq creates any tension in this 5-way alliance and they are too smart to let the hard left exploit it and divide them.

But Bush also remains (he always was popular) is the former communist block countries of eastern Europe as well - save Russia. By expanding NATO he has simultaneously weakened Russia and made himself a hero throughout Eastern Europe. Whether it's Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Ukraine, etc., President Bush has been very attentive to meeting the needs of these new U.S./NATO allies and as a result we have an excellent buffer between us and Russia should any Cold War feeling reemerge.



Whatever is handsome up to now anyways?

Jim